Breaking The Bonds
by Laryna6
Summary: X5 Maverick ending postscript. X has forgotten something very important. Alia tries to do something about it. That might not be the best idea. Zero was his anchor, but X can't afford to be dragged down with him.
1. Data Secured

_Disclaimer: I don't own Megaman, X or otherwise. No infringement intended or money made: please don't sue. _

_There are two more things I need to post this week and I've got writer's block on them. Joy. I swore no other projects until I got the various oneshots I'm doing for various people and a couple of the in-progress fics done, but this is the only fandom I'm not blocked in. Even then, I should be working on Definition or Garden, but this is one of those things that's bugged me for a long time and it's better than writing nothing. _

_I would say this was set after the bad ending of X5 if there was such a thing as a good ending of X5. Let's say the ending where Zero went maverick and afterwards, X doesn't remember Zero and his systems won't accept any data about him, they can't remind him of Zero, nothing works._

* * *

><p>Normally, Commander X was an unusually patient person. Unless lives were on the line, of course. He also understood the importance of regular medical examinations, even though his systems were so atypical and they were lucky if they got more than three new bits of data about them yearly, these days.<p>

Normally, X would have been as interested in what they were doing as if he was still a researcher himself. Normally, with something like this, he would have been as alarmed as they were. No, more alarmed, because these were his systems.

He should have seemed shocked or betrayed, not vaguely bored. Any other senior hunter would be tapping their fingers on the armrest or something by now, if not actively rolling their eyes or asking if they could go yet the way rookies who hadn't yet learned subtlety would have. Or they would have if this was a pointless waste of time.

Which it wasn't. Well, it wasn't like they were making any headway, so technically it was, but what this implied?

Here she was, trying to hold back panic, and there he sat, acting like he was humoring them. Because, as far as he knew, he was.

"I'm going to try uploading the data one more time, Commander," she told him, trying to put off giving up. Trying to put off having to analyze this data and write a report on what all of this meant.

"If it makes you feel better, go ahead, Alia," X said reassuringly.

No, she doubted it would. Still, she tried to send the file.

Again.

And it was stopped by X's firewalls, again.

"By this point, my firewalls are on alert. You might get better data on their responses if we tried this again tomorrow." X glanced at the clock.

"I'm testing your firewalls?" Alia asked. It was an honest question. Was that what he thought?

"I understand why you're concerned, since Sigma created a new virus-" And they couldn't afford to lose their only immune hunter.

"Two."

When X just looked at her, surprised by the interruption, Alia added, "Two new viruses."

"Two that combined into one," X acknowledged. "As I was saying, I understand why you're concerned that the new version might have more effect on me, but I don't see how uploading clean data files is going to do that."

Clean? They'd _scrubbed _these data files. Tried to remove key words, any possible reason for X to see them as potentially hostile or means of easily identifying their content.

"I know that research is more important, but at this rate I'm going to be late for my meeting with Signas about my rank test results."

He'd ranked SA, the same as he-who-must-not-be-named. Well, no, she could say Zero's name all she wanted. X just wouldn't hear it.

The slight hesitation that lowered his speed, forever dooming him to rank B, but meant he'd almost never made a friend/foe identification mistake in all the years since he'd been promoted to commander? It was gone.

Like Zero.

Like X's memories of Zero. The training was still there, but the person who had given him that training was, 'Someone… it was a long time ago.' That was what X had said, and shrugged, when X had a perfectly searchable memory. Not being able to recall someone he owed a great deal should have raised red flags.

"X, don't you think it's strange that you're rejecting clean data files?" Alia tried, almost desperately.

"Clean of the virus," he corrected her. "They contain harmful data. My firewalls scan every upload before permitting it into the main systems." He frowned now, and she would have breathed a sigh of relief if the pause had gone on a little longer. "You didn't know that they contained harmful data?" Now he was the one wondering if something was wrong with her. If he was going to have to break in a new spotter, after yet another one went maverick.

"It's not harmful."

"According to my firewalls, it is."

"It's data about someone you used to know. Something's keeping you from accessing it. X, don't you realize what this means? For the first time, someone has managed to tamper with your systems."

He sighed, even more clearly humoring her. "Alia, no one's managed to tamper with my systems. I was designed to have complete control over my systems and mind, remember?"

"But there's data missing from your memories. So much of it. And you lost it in between defeating Sigma and when we found you. What if the repair capsules…"

"Alia…" X would have facepalmed if he was anyone else. "The repair capsules were created for me by Dr. Light, remember?"

"Yes." She nodded. "Exactly. He'd know your systems better than anyone."

X sighed, looking tired for a second. "And why did Dr. Light create me?"

"To…"

"…You don't know?" Didn't know why he existed? Why her species existed? Had the virus really made them forget everything other than the threat of losing themselves? What was never meant to be had become everyday, hadn't it, X thought, and felt old.

"Well, I just assumed… You're superior to a robot master." Wasn't that what people did, try to improve on their work?

"Alia, I was created because Dr. Light was tired of having his children kidnapped and reprogrammed. I was meant to be free from that threat. A being with absolute free will, free from anyone's control from my own. If Dr. Light knew a means of cracking my systems that could sneak past all the failsafes I have set up to detect something like that, he wouldn't have programmed the capsules with how to use it, he would have gone back to the drawing board and created a scenario to train me to defend against it." While he was hibernating and evolving in that capsule. "My firewall and data setting were accessed in that time frame."

"You can remember that?" Even if nothing else? Not even the lost wielder of the beam saber he still carried?

"Of course. Security setting information is important." Obviously. "Yes, it was a larger change than normal, but that makes sense, doesn't it? Since there's an entirely new strain of virus now, in addition to the normal minor mutations."

"So, if you really have control over your security settings, can't you undo that change?" Alia asked, leaning forward, trying to hide her eagerness, her desperate hope.

He just looked at her, eyes serious, and frowned. "Alia, think about what you just said. You just asked me to _reduce my defenses against the maverick virus."_ Either she hadn't thought that question through or she was a maverick, and he'd have to kill her like so many others. Like Zero. It wouldn't be the first spotter he'd had to kill, to protect what was left of his unit.

All she could do was shake her head and raise her hands, horrified.

"All the data I sealed was data that would reduce my ability to fight the virus," he assured her, willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. But he would be watching her. The new virus seemed easier to detect, less subtle & less shielded against scanning, but there were two viruses, weren't there? "Alia, I know you're… stressed. Everyone is. This is… an even greater failure than Repliforce." He took a deep breath. "Have yourself scanned." By someone else. That was all the chance he could give her, his eyes warned her. "If I can get the test results from Lifesaver and they're clean, I won't mention this to Signas. For as long as I can." Until she did something else suspicious, because there were lives at stake. Too many had died: he couldn't risk letting a Typhoid Mary live, no matter how long they'd worked together.

He hadn't been able to let Zero live. He'd killed his best friend. Just like any other maverick. He'd remembered the battle, when he reported to Signas. He just hadn't remembered that it was anyone special. Just another maverick. An unusually powerful one, with a good weapon, but just another maverick.

There was no need to mourn just another maverick, any other commander would have said, but this was X, who did mourn them all. He just kept fighting, regardless, to save those who could still be saved.

Yet he still carried that beam saber.

Was it because it was Zero's weapon, and he remembered him on some subconscious level? No, X didn't _have _a subconscious. He was aware of everything that went on in his mind.

Was it really just because it was a powerful weapon? That wouldn't explain the care he took with it, when normally he wasn't all that attached to the weapons he gained during wars. There would be another war, with improved weapons.

Or was it because of the fact it was so old? That so much care had clearly been taken with it? Did X recognize that it had once been someone's pride and joy? Was it because Sigma used a beam saber, and X had built Sigma? Could he feel the weight of memories in it, did they call out to his own even now that his memories of Zero were gone?

Would he have done this for any of them?

"…X?"

"Yes, Alia?"

"Will you remember me, when I'm gone?"

He frowned at her again. "Alia, don't talk like that. And of course I would."

Of course he would. Because losing her wouldn't hurt as much as losing Zero. He could go on, if she died. She would have someone to remember her.

"I'm glad," she said, and smiled.

The inevitability of death hung over her head like the sword of Damocles, like the blade X carried. One of the two immune hunters gone, and with him the reason for both his years of immunity to the virus and the secret of whatever connection he'd had to it.

Alia envied X sometimes.

She wished _she _could stop thinking about it.

* * *

><p><em>Oh hello there, Wear &amp; Tear-style Alia. <em>

_I've seen a lot of people accuse Dr. Light of tampering with X's mind against his will just because Dr. Light/the LightAI was there earlier and worried about his son._

_The only problem is that this is completely impossible given what we know about the series and the characters. Dr. Light is not capable of reprogramming X like that. No one is. That was the entire point of building X in the first place. If Dr. Light had come up with a means of cracking X, he wouldn't have programmed the capsules with how to use it (because then someone could have found out from the capsules). Hence, despite his genius, Dr. Light or anything based on him is the last person that would be capable of cracking X. If anyone was capable of cracking X, it would be Dr. Wily, and he clearly hasn't or else X would have gone maverick already. _

_So, once the impossible has been ruled out, the actually plausible and quite common makes for a good hypothesis. _

_Repression FTW: because X does not have the time to lie around in an angst coma mourning his best friend/partner/brother in all but blood/teacher/rescuer/the many things Zero is to him when there are people that need saving. _

_If only we all had that much control over our own minds…_

_Edit: I realized I wrote lightsaber for beam saber. Well, it _is.


	2. Data Corrupted

_A fic that was incomplete in my documents for ages, given an ending finally when I realized it meshed well with something I'd written earlier and could serve as a sequel._

_Supposes that X6 can follow on from a certain ending of X5 if X's memories of Zero returned when Zero did. That period when he didn't remember his best friend's existence isn't referenced in the following because it's narrated from X's POV and he doesn't remember/think of the gap. _

_He had to forget Zero in order to function, and the fact that his ability to remain sane (one of the better definitions of sane is able to function in society/day to day to life) is that precarious... _

_It's also been awhile since X5: this takes place post-Command Mission, presuming Alia and Signas are still alive. I wanted to toss him _some _bone._

* * *

><p>For weeks now, the barracks had been buzzing not about the usual things, like the latest fashion, newest meme, or superstition about the virus, but ghosts.<p>

That wasn't very unusual, really. So many hunters died, it was only human – or reploid, for that matter – to want to think that they would come back in some way, shape, or form. Every so often ghosts would become the latest craze, and sometimes someone _would _claim to see one on base.

It wasn't always that they were lying. They wanted to believe, often enough.

X was known as the person to ask about odd, old, or human things if they wanted accurate information instead of fourth-hand gossip. There was a bookshelf in the seventeenth's common area that he kept stocked with various things. Sometimes people brought them back, sometimes they didn't. He preferred it when they didn't.

The books were always returned to him… afterwards. While a book stayed gone, he could hope that meant the hunter who borrowed it was still alive.

He also heard maintenance's complaints about how they were getting all these complaints about cold spots and odd noises coming from the walls, and they couldn't find anything.

It was starting to make some people a little paranoid, but then paranoia was the better part of survival, these days. A few rookies had to be reassured that no, auditory hallucinations weren't a symptom of infection, but then they'd known that.

Unit Zero was uniformly convinced that it was a prank, and a very impressive one that wasn't being pulled by them, for once, as part of their secondary mission of playing 'Red Team' and keeping everyone else on their toes. Zero was staying out of it so far, as was X, but when the 'ghost' hadn't come forward to take credit for it, they'd started to worry about the vulnerabilities in security whoever was doing this had to be exploiting, and X had needed to explain to one of the younger ones that Ghostbusters was a work of _fiction_ and shown them how to tell the difference.

Unit Seventeen had thrown themselves into trying to solve the mystery more because it was a mystery. Most of the other units were adding to the gossip and/or the amount of money in the betting pool Alia was running. Command had the view that since people were going to place bets _anyway_, they should be organized by someone who could be trusted not to rip the rookies off.

It was also another means of keeping track of things.

Currently, the smart money said that Commander Zero definitely wasn't responsible, since it would take some technical wizardry to fool people's sensors like this and Zero was well-known to not like technology that required anything more complicated to operate than a beam sabre's on button. He could have ordered Maintenance's security programmers to set it up, or Unit Zero's own information extraction experts, but keeping something like that secret, with all of them involved in trying to figure it out, would have required serious acting ability. Few reploids could act that well, unless the virus was involved.

The _very _smart money said that Commander Zero had either been informed by the prankster in advance or had already figured it out, because otherwise he'd care more, between the hole in base security & the fact he'd been around long enough to lose lots of people.

The reason a lot of hunters were hoping ghosts were real was because practically everyone here had someone they wanted to see again.

The bright but sadly wrong money had noticed that it was close to Halloween and the person most likely to want to celebrate an old holiday was X, who had a frankly ridiculous ability to override just about everything in Maverick Hunter HQ for several reasons. He'd worked with these systems for years, of course, but he was immune, so he had _official _ability to override… anything that might need to be stopped by someone who wasn't a maverick.

He'd made it snow… was it eleven years ago already? He'd cleared it with Signas and the others in advance, of course, but the break from routine had been meant as a surprise, and it had definitely surprised them.

They'd needed it.

Just as they needed the distraction from the risk of death the prospect of life after death offered.

X was surprised no one but he and Zero had figured it out yet, not even Alia or Signas. But then, very few of the 'modern' Hunters had gotten to know any humans.

Just as the Mavericks all kept working from the same basic 'playbook,' reploids tended to start with the same set of… principles? Tools for understanding and manipulating the world? And most of them didn't realize the wealth of tactics history offered, nor live enough to gain the experience with tactics necessary to learn the value of coming out of left field.

Humans thought _differently_ from reploids, and from each other. It took time for a personality to establish itself and become unique (as opposed to just defining itself in terms of the people around it: similar or different), and a young human generally had ten years to a rookie's ten weeks.

Most of the Hunters had never realized that there were people other than mavericks who just didn't work the way they did. They knew that X and Zero were 'strange,' but never thought about it in those terms.

X had decided to see how long it would take them to realize that this was something out of their experience and start thinking about what that meant. Hopefully once they made the leap it wouldn't take them too long.

Then the recently-promoted Commander of the Fourth had become convinced that it was the ghost of the previous Commander.

X didn't know if the ghost had tried to lead the poor reploid on or if he had deluded himself, but that was a sign things had gone on long enough.

Which was why he was walking through the halls using not normal, night, or heat vision, but the spectroscopic analysis he used when doing finicky repairs or trying to detect virus particulate that wasn't in a large enough concentration to be visible with normal vision.

Zero had sent him an innocent-seeming communication earlier, so the haunt should be about to get started. Everyone knew that Commander X had exceptional systems, and Zero had drummed into a certain someone's head that sneaking up on either of them was likely to end in someone getting shot, since even though X didn't want to kill innocents, decades of fighting tended to ingrain some reflexes.

Unlike most reploids, X could remove all of his armor, and he had a set of armor which included a faceplate for when he wanted to pass as an ordinary Reploid it came in handy at times like…

X's glove closed around empty air: for a moment it stayed empty, and his eyes began to widen, but then he felt the solid metal that should have been there.

…this.

The armor gripped by his brown glove was white, and the startled eyes that met his were orange.

That, now, that was a surprise.

He told himself that he couldn't be sure. Lumine would have been insulted, demanding to know how it was possible, that he could be caught like this by a mere reploid.

He felt the copy system (Axl's copy system, please let it still be Axl's) attempt to scan him.

Also the white-armored reploid was floating, without obvious jets. That could mean an upgraded armor, or, well, Zero had floated. For part of the time he wasn't himself. When X was forced to fight him, and thankfully Zero woke up, returned to himself, later.

Axl and Zero almost certainly had the same creator. That meant he could hope it worked the same way for both of them.

But what, then, of Lumine?

"…Caught, huh?" the boy (and yet he was older than so many of the hunters now) asked sheepishly.

"Have you looked at yourself in a mirror while using this armor?" X asked him.

"Armor? It's not an armor, I just figured out how to go intangi-" Axl frowned, scanning his own appearance. "Something weird happened when you made me solid again. I didn't know my _appearance _changed while I was invisible. Why would it do that?" Seemed like a total waste of effort.

Once again, X wished he could go back to his studies, to the lab. Once again, he washed the wars were over, but, "Alia will be interested in your new ability, but you're interfering with someone's mourning." Giving them false hope, that they could see their loved one again. The line had been crossed between the nebulous desire to believe in _something, _and the hope that it could be real, that they could see their loved ones again, that led people to study the virus. How it brought back Sigma, Vile, so many others as twisted ruins of their former selves.

Studying the virus always ended in death or infection. Unless you were X, and just because he hadn't died yet…

"I wouldn't do that! I took Red's form, but…" But Axl was the only one left to remember the original Red, the only one left who would mourn. And he'd taken it to defeat Sigma.

"I know," that Axl hadn't tried to mimic anyone. He'd played _a _ghost, not _someone's _ghost. "We let it go on this long since there wasn't… there shouldn't have been any harm in it." X wished, how he _wished, _that one person's loss could be the most important thing here. But not just invisibility, actual intangibility? "How long have you had this power?" Axl had learned how to become invisible with the help of a new invention during the Giga City Incident, and he _had _avoided some rather difficult attacks, but it wasn't as though X knew how difficult the individual dodges were when he hadn't known where Axl was at the time. Even his infinite potential system had needed a little time to work on the problem of seeing through that new breed of invisibility.

"Invisibility? I got the hyper mode at-"

"No," X told him. "When I tried to touch you, at first you weren't there."

Still-orange eyes (as thought Axl didn't have any idea why orange eyes could possibly be suspicious, as though Axl hadn't despised Lumine and wouldn't have wanted to rid himself of any resemblance to that idiot) blinked a little. "Really? I thought I'd come pretty close to being clipped a few times…"

The conversation continued, X discussing technical details, or rather enlightening Axl, almost on autopilot, knowledge and habits from when he'd worked from Dr. Cain called up from the depths of memory. It hurt to call them up, because everyone had lost someone.

And, it appeared, he'd lost Axl. This attempt to act innocent proclaimed that he wasn't, to someone who had spent _decades _watching everyone around him for the little changes, the little signs that someone's personality was beginning to warp, that the virus had eaten them alive from within.

Lumine was pretending to be Axl, pretending to be their comrade. The same tactic used by 'Spider.'

The virus' tactic, really. Control the hunters, turn them against the world, have the murderous enemies pretend to still be X's friends.

He almost wished that it wasn't so easy not to cry. He'd mourned Axl on the way back from that battle. He'd mourned Axl when he joined the hunters, because hunters always died, and at the time he and Zero had no reason to think him immune.

For that matter, Zero wasn't immune.

It was possible that it was Isoc who infected Dr. Gate. That empty shell of a body, left behind to point them towards the realization that it was inhabited by the ghost of Zero's father. That Zero had that man's insane desire for vengeance and destruction to thank for his resurrection.

Yet the lab recordings, certain ones Alia had handed over to X without watching herself, because what she didn't know she wasn't legally bound to report? The ones he'd reviewed on his break to study the virus?

It was Zero, and his awakening, that made Dr. Gate maverick.

Zero was still infectious. Being around him was exposing the hunters to the virus. But _fighting _the virus exposed the hunters to it. Infections were inevitable. And for now, Zero was saving more lives than he took, by killing mavericks. For now, he couldn't be sealed away. They _needed _him. If the occasional poor newbuilt was infected?

If Lumine decided to create the virus within the body that was once Axl's (he _hoped _it was once Axl's, that the child hadn't been a lie all along, they _still _weren't certain about Spider and he knew it gnawed at Zero and knew that was the plan) and infected one or two members of the unit? He couldn't infect that many, he couldn't be obvious about it, not without blowing his cover.

If his cover was already blown, then there was no reason to try to keep it intact.

There was no reason to have Axl fight mavericks in order to remain in proximity to X and Zero, to study their weaknesses, if he knew X knew.

It was too much. To look forward to seeing him every day, seeing that child's face, Zero's little brother, a sign that immunity could be possible, their hope for the future…

False hope.

So, so very cruel.

Why did the virus, the mavericks, the world, have to be so cruel?

Because he was the last creation of Dr. Light, and making him suffer, well, it wasn't the _only _reason this was happening, otherwise killing himself so all of this would _stop_, the innocents would stop getting caught up in this, would start looking like a valid option, but it was _a _reason.

He couldn't let Lumine see him cry.

He _wouldn't _let the ghost of Zero's creator, Dr. Wily's remnant, have the satisfaction.

Zero would want to destroy the cause, and it would remind him that he _couldn't. _X didn't want to do that to him.

Perhaps, perhaps Signas.

They were coming up on the anniversary of Dr. Cain's death.

Let the Commander of the Hunters, let the only survivor of his friend's children, let Dr. Cain's son think that X was crying for Signas' father, for his old friend, instead of yet another lost boy.

* * *

><p><em>It's entirely possible that Zero is an <em>active _Typhoid Mary, since the series states that he has to be sealed away or else eliminating the virus can't work: more people will just get infected by Zero, if they don't purify him. _

Wow _this series lends itself to depressing thoughts. A scarily plausible bit of musing about how things could have gone down in canon, although someone needs to do a real fic where Lumine took over Axl in X8, and Spider/Redips were more of Lumine's, while 'Axl' watched X and Zero..._

_The first fic in this collection/series: X has to forget Zero, or else he _can not _remain sane, or just able to function_. _What about when that isn't an option, or isn't the option that will save the most lives... for now. Staving off disaster in the short term, but without a cure for the virus, all they _can _do is stave off disaster in the short term. And X knows that, given X7._


End file.
